Funambol Synchronizes with Google Android

U.S. firm Funambol announces an Android version of its Open Source mobile sync application for the new Google/T-Mobile G1 phone.

The new Funambol Android Client synchronizes the contacts from a Google gPhone with a Funambol Server. Currently available in an "early version," the final release is promised to ship when the first Android G1 mobile phones become available. The G1 device had been announced just days ago at a press release with the development trio T-Mobile, Google and hardware maker HTC. Funambol considers the speed at which their Android integration occurred to be proof of the talent of the Open Source community.

The mobile application enables users to sync with, and share contacts from, other applications, mobile devices, desktop software such as MS Outlook, web mail such as Yahoo and Google Mail, and Internet providers such as AOL. Funambol calls this capability Mobile"We" to differentiate it as a "Rest of Us" application from Apple's MobileMe in not being limited to Mac and Me email addresses only. The company considers itself having opened doors for the G1 phone. As Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco asserts, "The Google Phone is a great example of how the mobile industry is embracing open source, but at the same time, it's also more open for Google than other software and services." He self-confidently describes how things will now become really interesting for G1 phones: "[The Client can] help gPhones realize their open source potential by enabling them to sync a wide range of content with virtually any source."

The current version of the Funambol Android Client is available for download from the Funambol forge page. The finale version should come out when the G1 phones ship and the Android market is open for third-party applications through Google and T-Mobile. Future releases should support further mobile content such as calendars and push email.

At the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco on May 27, Google's senior director for mobile platforms Andy Rubin made it public that many new Google phones are expected to appear by end of 2009.

In one fell swoop and with an automatically distributed patch, Google and T-Mobile fixed a problem with the G1 mobile phone whereby users could access root privileges and possibly raise all kinds of havoc.